I cannot say that I ever liked Ehud Olmert. But now I almost feel sorry for him.
It is not pleasant to see how they pounce on him, like jackals and hyenas fighting over a carcass. And that also raises some questions.
Was Olmert the only fallible human being in this paradise? Not at all. The stories about the envelopes stuffed with cash, the cigars and the luxury suites in posh hotels fire the imagination, but the hedonism of Olmert is no different from that of previous prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu lived like a king in expensive hotels paid for by kind donors who, of course, ask for nothing in return, whose sole purpose in life is to allow him to revel in luxury. As for Barak — after decades of service as an army officer with a salary that did not reach the sky and some years as a cabinet minister with a similar income, he disappeared from public view for a short while and reappeared as a rich man.
He bought a luxury apartment in one of the most expensive buildings in Tel Aviv, a structure that is a byword for ostentatious wealth. How does one get so rich in such a short time? Could it be by using connections acquired in the service of the state?
Pioneer
Olmert was a pioneer of this method. When still a very junior politician, just out of law school, he got rich through his connections with the heads of government departments that he made as a parliamentary aide.
The closer the connection between capital and power, and the more contact there is between local and foreign tycoons on the one hand and politicians and generals on the other, the more profusely corruption flowers.
What does that say about our politicians? Simply, that none of them is a leader.
The priorities of a mere politician are quite different: he wants power in order to enjoy the amenities it brings with it. Power as a means. The amenities of power — money, luxuries, high-class restaurants, prestigious hotels — are the aim.
According to this definition, the entire recent and current crop of Israeli politicians are all just ordinary politicians.
People ask themselves what Olmert needed it for? Was it worthwhile to risk his whole future for a vacation in Italy, expensive cigars, luxury suites in hotels and upgrading his flights?
The conditions in which he lived as a child probably had something to do with his behaviour as an adult. He grew up in the '50s in a neighbourhood set up by the Herut party (today's Likud party) for ex-members of the Zionist paramilitary Irgun.
It was a poor neighbourhood, and the children of the old-established village, which belonged to the political mainstream, looked down upon its inhabitants. In those days Herut was far from power, their members still considered "outsiders" who did not belong.
Intoxicated
When a person with such a background ascends the political ladder, the possibilities that open up before him are liable to intoxicate him. A world of pampering and pandering is there for the taking. And when an American "exile Jew" — an utterly contemptuous term for Jews abroad — who considers it a great honor to support him, comes and offers him all the goodies, the temptation is just too great.
Perhaps because of his childhood feeling of not belonging, Olmert desperately craves haverim. "Haver" is a typical Hebrew word denoting comrade, friend, pal, army buddy. Olmert needs haverim who adore him, especially intellectuals and/or rich people.
He loves to pamper his friends, to take them with him whenever he goes on journeys and vacations. He showers them with warmth and charm, slaps their shoulders, devotes time and attention to them.
Another angle to the matter is the relationship between Olmert and Morris Talansky, who supplied him for many years with the stuffed envelopes. Talansky treated him as a slave treats his master. After some time, Olmert started to treat him as a servant. I almost said: as a colonial master treats an inferior native.
This is not unusual. Many Israelis treat the Jews of the diaspora as if they were colonial subjects, who are obligated to serve and support the aristocrats of the "mother" country. Thinking and speaking about US Jews, they inadvertently repeat anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Talansky suits this stereotype perfectly. Olmert saw him like this, and that is how he saw himself. When Olmert came to the US and honoured Talansky with his presence before his Jewish neighbors and acquaintances, it raised his status, and for this he was prepared to pay a lot.
The occupation
A question presents itself. Why do these fatal scandals always break when a leader takes a step towards peace, or at least pretends to take a step towards peace?
I do not believe that there is a conspiracy. We have here a more profound phenomenon. The main thrust of the current establishment is towards occupation, expansion and war.
Therefore, when a corruption scandal concerns a leader moving in that direction, the scandal is smothered in its infancy. But when the scandal involves a leader who is making gestures in the direction of peace, the scandal reaches huge proportions.
That happened to former PM Ariel Sharon on the eve of the dismantling of the Gaza Strip settlements. It is happening now to Olmert when he dares to speak about peace with Syria and the evacuation of the Golan settlements.
Lord Acton is famous for his dictum: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In the same vein, we say that occupation corrupts, and total occupation corrupts totally.
Olmert is the typical product of the cynicism and lawlessness that have infected this country in the 41 years of occupation.
That does not mean that there was no corruption before. There certainly was. The corruption was born together with the state, and not by accident. A lot has been said recently about al Naqba (the "catastrophe" — the Palestinian term for the creation of the Israel state in 1948).
But one phenomenon that accompanied al Naqba is consistently ignored: the massive theft of abandoned Arab property.
In the course of the 1948 flight and expulsion, some 100,000 to 150,000 Arab families abandoned their homes. Many of them lived in simple dwellings, but not a few were living in elegant houses in Jaffa, Jerusalem and Haifa.
What happened to the interior of these homes? To the tens of thousands of expensive carpets, fauteuils, refrigerators, wardrobes, pianos? Where did the inventories of shops and stores go?
They disappeared.
Some of them did reach government storerooms and were distributed to new immigrants. The huge majority were just stolen.
That was no secret. We knew and talked about this at the time. I spoke about it many times in the Knesset (Israel's parliament). For years one could see the sofas and armchairs covered with velvet draping in private living rooms and offices. But the phenomenon was never investigated, and later on was smothered and suppressed.
The theft in broad daylight of the property abandoned by individuals already violated the ethos that was accepted before the foundation of the state. The denial and suppression made it worse.
But the large-scale corruption, whose bitter fruit we see now in all its ugliness, started indeed with the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967.
The occupation is corrupt, and it corrupts by its very nature. It denies all human rights, including the right to property. It fills the occupied territories with an atmosphere of general lawlessness.
It enriches the occupier and everybody connected with him. It creates a climate of wanton cynicism, an environment of "anything goes". Such an atmosphere does not stop at the Green Line. It permeates the state of the conqueror.
That's where the rot set in.
[Abridged from http://gush-shalom.org.]